Case Study

20 November 2018

Partnership with MessageMedia unearths opportunities for JobReady

JobReady is a technology provider that develops cloud-based platforms. Its range of web-based, fully managed and hosted solutions deliver operational efficiencies for customers through streamlining and automating operations and business processes. All JobReady products offer SMS functionality as a standard feature integrating SMS functionality so that message sending is automated based on system triggers.

JobReady started working with MessageMedia in 2012 when it initially signed up as a corporate account.

“We needed a reliable SMS service for a customer who had requested it,” said Hourn Hourn, Commercial Manager at JobReady.

JobReady elevates its partnership with MessageMedia

At the time, JobReady was not aware how many of their customers were using SMS or with which product. “We didn’t know which providers our customers were using, or how many SMS messages they sent,” said Hourn. “We also didn’t see the many and varied applications of SMS across the whole business and had limited understanding of what was possible. We were neither levering our customer base, nor offering the support we could have.”

Following an internal customer review, MessageMedia identified a number of customers who were using SMS with JobReady. The partner team approached JobReady with the view to extend the relationship and take it to a more strategic level.

Hourn says, “We had a conversation about what was working, and what wasn’t. They determined our appetite to invest in the relationship and assigned a partner account manager to work with us. This allowed us to elevate the relationship and identify opportunities and new SMS applications. The introduction of the partner marketing team has added yet another layer of expertise and allowed us to take a more strategic view.”

The JobReady product range uses either Email2SMS or an API. There is scope to extend the API across the other products in the range, which will provide more flexibility and immediacy to the workflow process for customers.

Hourn explains, “SMS is an important service because of the industry we are in. It’s an industry characterised by passive or one direction communication such as compliance. Education providers and employment consultants need to communicate with job seekers and prove that communication is getting through. SMS is the best way to do this and the MessageMedia API means you can get the system to do your work for you by automating the dissemination of this information via a channel we know the audience uses.”

“Our customer’s customers are always looking at their phones. These days people seem to prefer receiving text to a call, particularly if it’s just to get a piece of information that they don’t need to do anything else with,” said Hourn.

SMS is a particularly effective communication channel for students as 95 percent of 18-29-year olds say they use the text messaging feature on their phones.

“The key benefits are the simplicity of being able to send the communication out in bulk and not having to think about executing the same task over and again,” says Hourn. “One hundred percent of our customers use SMS to communicate with their customers at some point in the relationship.”

A positive experience with great communication

Hourn is positive about his experience to date with the MessageMedia partner team. “The relationship is blossoming and I really like the way they go about the preferred partner model: the follow-up, response times and comms that come out always add value.”

He said they never have to chase the team and whenever they do reach out, they get a quick response that leads to a resolution. “If there is a hiccup, as it’s inevitable there will be a challenge, the response times are good and that’s where you see good relationships go to great relationships.”

JobReady is currently working on improving its SMS documentation to better manage customer expectations about the service through more effective communication. This is just a few months away from being fully automated and implemented. “I think we both understand that we need to commit time, energy and resource to this so we can all get the best possible results out of the relationship,” concludes Hourn.